


You've Never Had It So Good

by BluWacky



Category: The Hour
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:16:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluWacky/pseuds/BluWacky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You will see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime - nor indeed in the history of this country.  Indeed, let us be frank about it..."</p>
<p>Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister, 1957</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Never Had It So Good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthjamtart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/gifts).



> The Hour plays fast and loose with linguistic and historical accuracy, shuffling events around 1956 and 1957 like nobody’s business (the El Paradis investigation cannot be supposed to take the full year it would have done to cover the office Christmas party, the Wolfenden Report AND the NATO summit!). You will forgive me if I have done the same.
> 
> Takes place at an unspecified point in early Season 2.

Lime Grove was a mass of contradictions.  The wood-panelled walls of the executive corridors – where the Auntie glitterati would lurk, cloistered in their plush offices debating policy and port –were rich and dark, marinated in the secrets and gossip that hung heavy around every corner and  mingled with the heady choke of cigar and cigarette smoke.  By contrast, one could almost taste the clinical nature of the studios, the bright gleam of the sets a vivid contrast to the dull grey of the cameras and monitors that festooned the production control room, separated merely by glass. 

When The Hour had been taken off the air Bel had thought about _borrowing_ , just borrowing, one of the microphones from the set, with their beautiful BBC framing.  It would have looked nice somewhere at home, perhaps.  It would have been a gutsy move – but not the right _kind_ of guts.

The actors who twittered and flittered through the halls would often comment on the banal nature of filming – their week of tedious, technical rehearsal, with only the buzz of the live performance at the end of it to truly satisfy them artistically.  Bel often wondered whether even that was enough, as she watched them come and go through weeks of episodes of _Dixon of Dock Green_ , their faces flitting between masks of elation and defeated weariness.    Her mother wore those masks, too, perhaps a consequence of the showgirl life; Bel often wondered whether she herself was as transparently deceptive.

She’d met Tony Hancock once in passing ; a jittery man, but then weren’t they all?  That had vaguely impressed someone, somewhere, one evening, after not enough to drink.

Bel knew all about that buzz, though.  The feeling in your stomach as transmission approached; Hector’s inevitable, nonchalant stroll (or was it _roll_? Words would be had _again_ about his liquid diet) on set scant seconds before going live; Freddie wittering away in indignation; the knowledge that people would _care_ if you got it wrong.  There was something utterly jubilant about going out on the air at last, after all the preparation, the budget meetings, the shot setups, the running order... Seeing it – her work – coalesce into something potentially brilliant, something that could change the way people saw the world, and having it all happen right at that moment, was a feeling like nothing else.

It wasn’t magic; it was just right.

“Rubbish, Moneypenny.”  Freddie leaned against the wall, taking no heed of the endless pictures and cuttings posted there; there was no escaping the news in Bel’s office.  “You make it sound like the efficiency is everything – a clean show is a good show, something like that.  Of course all that _matters_ to some extent, but you can’t tell me that your ideal programme would run absolutely according to some predictable routine you’ve pitched to Randall Brown and have spent the past week battering into shape like a particularly fetching blacksmith.”

“You cannot tell me what I do and do not like about my work just because you think you are some unassailable paragon of intellectualism.”  Bel really wanted a drink.  She smoothed down her green dress briefly; she had spilt something unidentifiable on the front at lunch, probably from the “pineapple surprise” in the canteen.  “Of course the news itself is ultimately what is important; I’m not saying that I want to go and…  I don’t know, work on _Whack-Oh!_ and live in a world of farce and fantasy.  I just take pride in the fact that I have decided what is going to happen on the programme and it plays out the way I have planned it – with minimal interference from Randall, thank you very much.”

“What matters is the _story_ , whether we have spent the whole week primping and polishing it or it just… comes out of nowhere.”  Freddie waved his hands expansively.  “Say the bomb dropped while we were transmitting, or a guest died on camera.  That wouldn’t be in your precious schedule, and Mr Wengrow would undoubtedly end up in conniptions trying to cart corpses around the studio.”  Bel stifled a smile as he continued, as endearingly earnest as ever.  “But there, live in black and white on television screens in homes around the country, a new story would be told – and we’d be the ones telling it.  How can that not set your senses tingling – showcasing an unexpected truth?”

“I genuinely do not like the unexpected, Freddie.”  Bel, sitting on the edge of the desk, let her legs swing slightly, like a child.  “No, let me finish,“ – Freddie had opened his mouth in indignation – “what we do, what we report on… it is not the unexpected.  From the lightest puff piece to the most sordid investigation I do not see the news as _surprising_.”

Freddie remained incredulous.  “I was almost recruited into a Russian spy training programme and you do not find that _surprising?_ ”

“Will you just listen for once instead of being so bloody sure that you’re right?”  Bel rose from her desk in frustration.  “People – ordinary people – may do things that are not so ordinary, whether they become Prime Minister or a mass murderer like John Christie.   That can be news, and it can be _glorious_ news, whether good or bad.  But these - these are not unpredictable actions.  People laugh and rule and kill and weep every day.  Remember that story on the Messinas we were going to run?  Surely this whole Cilenti affair has proven that such corruption is almost predictable?  No, I don’t find the news surprising.  I find it fascinating – sometimes grimly so - but it is, after all, just people being people.”

Freddie barely missed a beat.  “You could have been my secretary, you know.  If I’d been a spy.  Just imagine the fun we could have had in service of Mother Russia.  Comrade Moneypennyska.”

“ _You_ could have been _my_ secretary, you mean.  I’m not going back to doing my own typing if I can possibly help it, Russia be damned.  Plus you would never have met Camille if you’d joined up with Clarence.”

“Were you and Hector just people being people?”.   Freddie had turned to face away from Bel; he spoke lightly, airily, as if it were nothing.

“Why did you _leave,_ Freddie?”

“Why didn’t you write?”

Bel didn’t – couldn’t – respond.  It was Freddie who broke the silence.

"Do you remember the Great Smog at the start of the decade, Bel?"

"Who doesn't?  Did you know anyone who died?"

Freddie furrowed his brow.  "No, no, of course not.  I mean, Dad found it very disorientating, but he wasn't so bad back then so it wasn't quite so... anyway, I perversely rather enjoyed it.  There had been an undeniable sense of, well,  _atmosphere_."  Bel smiled in spite of herself.  "I know London so well now, but even the most familiar of streets somehow became strange and new - maybe because it was enveloped in thick, impenetrable cloud, but the point still stands.  Every night here is startlingly vibrant, with the sky streaking yellow from electric lights and the streets heaving with people from all walks of life - but back then, caked in the smog, it felt like I was a lone traveller, walking blindly into a world where anything could be a surprise.  I like that kind of a world."

"You're not seriously advocating the abolishment of the Clean Air Act  _already_ , Freddie?  Sometimes the Government are actually acting in the best interests of the people, as hard as that may be to believe when your primary contact is Angus McCain."

“I just..." Freddie trailed off.  "Maybe it's not as simple as me liking surprises.  Maybe I just don't like things staying the same.  I've spent so much time trying to better myself - be better than everyone, have everyone be better in turn-"

"We stay the same, James."  Bel looked fondly at Freddie.  "We always stay the same, somehow, no matter what we've done or where we've been."

"Do we?  I've travelled the world and got married.  I even grew a beard!  And you..."

"Well, Bill's not married, so that's a plus point."  Bel laughed - genuinely, she was surprised to find.

Freddie changed tack again, as always.  "When Macmillan gave that speech in Bedford earlier this year, he was talking about the economy and a wonderful period of boom that the Mother Country has entered into, and that he had never seen anything like it in his lifetime or something along those lines.  Are we truly living in an age of glorious riches?  What if this is really as good as it is ever going to be?  With corruption infesting every corner of the Establishment and our society segregated?”  As ever, Freddie spoke archly, mockingly, dodging sincerity where possible.

"Given your one man crusade to rid London and the world of every single criminal element live on national television, whatever the consequences, I can only be sure that things will get better for someone - even if it isn't either of us."

"I couldn't do it without you though, Bel.  You know that."

Bel didn't hesitate.  "Exactly."   _Nor I you_ , she thought.

They sat in silence for a moment.  Neither looked at the other.

Maybe it was time, Bel thought, to tell him?

"Freddie, I-" 

“Oh, sod it, Moneypenny.  It’s late, we’re tired, and I am desperate for a drink.  Pub?”

He was too quick - as always.  “Oh thank god yes.  Lix has me convinced that drinking whiskey is something akin to a religious experience and I am very keen to discover if it is as transcendental as she makes out.”  Bel made to get her coat before stopping.  “What about Camille, though?”

“Again, and I say this with all the love I could possibly have in the world for my wife, _sod_ Camille.”  An impish smile flickered on Freddie’s face.  “Pub.  Now.”

That night mist swept the road outside the Houses, a mist that swirled in the cold air.  Bel had pressed in close, her head rested against Freddie’s neck as her arm nestled in his, shivering slightly.  As with virtually all those who worked at Lime Grove they wended their way towards The British Prince; filled with BBC crews, presenters, backroom staff, it was as if they had barely even left the office, and Freddie had smiled briefly at various faces he knew in passing as he shoved his way towards the crowded bar to order drinks.  Bel hung back, jostled by passing punters trying to push their way through to friends or head homewards.  The air lay thick with cigarette smoke and gossip; a nostalgic kind of grime that particularly reminded Freddie of when he’d first started out working on the newsreels.

The night drew on; they nursed their drinks together, swapped gossip, talked families, and went their separate ways.

Maybe, just for an evening, they'd never had it so good.


End file.
